Migrant teenagers and education: The obstacle course in the UK and Italy

Sixteen-year-old Somali girl Maryam’s dream is to become a doctor. She arrived in London in 2021 with her mother and siblings, to join her father. She did not speak English. Maryam attends secondary school and will be taking the exams for the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) this year. She is anxious: she knows that with her level of English it will not be easy to get a good grade. Standing between her and her dream is the reality of an education system that continues to make things hard for non-natives.

Among immigrant minors, teenagers are the ones who have the hardest time integrating at school. They are the “late arrivals”: girls and boys who are facing the trauma of migration at a delicate age. They are asked to acquire almost impossible skills within a short period of time. The problem is common to several European countries and affects thousands of adolescents every year: those who arrive with their families; unaccompanied minors; economic migrants; asylum seekers and refugees.

We cross-referenced the experiences of Italy and the United Kingdom. The two countries have similar stories to tell, despite their different educational systems.

Teacher role and exam challenge in London

It is not easy to count migrant students. In the UK, they fall into the category of “EAL students” (English as an Additional Language, i.e. pupils whose native language is not English). In England there are over 1.6 million EALs, which is 19.5 percent of all pupils (Gov.uk data 2021). In Italy, on the other hand, citizenship is taken into account. According to the latest survey, there are 865,388 non-Italian pupils, representing 10.3 percent of the total (Ministry of Education data, Miur 2020-21). However, these numbers also take into account children born in the country (in Italy, this is more than half of them) or who arrived as infants.

In Europe every child has the right to an educ…